"When she was cured, the Prince had her conducted to Chateauroux, one of his country-houses. She has been there kept for a long time imprisoned, and at present permission is only given her to walk in the court-yard, always strictly watched by the people whom the Prince always keeps about her. _The Duke is accused of having suggested to the Prince the treatment to which his mother is subjected: he was very glad_, it is said, to find a pretext for putting her in a place where she would _spend less_ than in society."[9] [9] Memoires of Mademoiselle de Montpensier, 4th part. Was it the hereditary avarice of the house of Conde which thus revealed itself in the odious sentiment of that unworthy son? Poor woman! Her only crime was that of being too liberal. She had, it is true, foolishly placed her diamonds in pledge at Bordeaux to support the cost of the war. But had she not, as a set-off to her prodigality, brought to the Duke d'Enghien and his father her share of Richelieu's wealth? That prudent advice of the excellent son was followed: the Princess was still a prisoner at Chateauroux, when the Prince her husband died, in 1686; and by way of a precaution--which cannot be thought of without a shudder, giving as it does the measure of an implacable hatred--he recommended that she should be so kept after his decease. This once, Mademoiselle did find a word of pity for the persecuted wife and mother. "I could have wished," says she, when speaking of the last moments of the Prince, "that he had not prayed the King to let his wife always be kept at Chateauroux, and I was very sorry for it...." And it was there, doubtless, that she died in 1694, at the age of sixty-six. The collections of funeral orations and sermons of celebrated preachers of that day will be searched in vain for any funeral tribute to her memory. And a feeling of disappointment arises that Bossuet, in his panegyric of the hero, could not find a word of praise, of consolation, or even of pity for the ill-fated shadow he left sorrowful and abandoned by all, to bear his name in pitiless obscurity to the grave. Mysterious destiny! strange fatality! which neither personal demerits, wrongs, nor faults justified, which neither love, devotedness, nor unfailing virtue, approved and respected even by the calumnious, could avert. PART II. THE DUCHESS OF PORTSMOUTH. VERY little is known for certain concerning the antecedents of Louise Querouaille before she figured at the Court of France as one of the maids of honour to the unfortunate Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles the Second of England. The contemporaries of the merry monarch, witnesses and censors of his political errors, in tracing them to their source, have attributed them primarily to the foreign favourite, who was, more than any other of the many mistresses of that Prince, odious in the eyes of the English people.